Cloned Access Point Detection and Point Detection and Prevention Mechanism in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Mesh Networks

IEEE 802.11 Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is an emerging low cost, decentralized community-based broadband technology, which is based on self-healing and multi-hop deployment of Access Points (APs), so that to increase the coverage area with maximum freedom to end-users to join or leave the network from anywhere anytime having low deployment and maintenance cost. Such kind of decentralized structure and multihop architecture increases its security vulnerabilities especially against the APs. One of such possible security attack is the placement of cloned AP to create serious performance degradation in IEEE 802.11 WMN. In this paper, we discuss the different security vulnerabilities of AP in IEEE 802.11 WMN along with possible research directions. We also propose a mutual cooperation mechanism between the multi-hop APs and serving gateway so that to detect and prevent the possibility of cloned AP. In this way the large scale exploitation of IEEE 802.11 WMN can be eliminated

A personal networking solution

This paper presents an overview of research being conducted on Personal Networking Solutions within the Mobile VCE Personal Distributed Environment Work Area. In particular it attempts to highlight areas of commonality with the MAGNET initiative. These areas include trust of foreign devices and service providers, dynamic real-time service negotiation to permit context-aware service delivery, an automated controller algorithm for wireless ad hoc networks, and routing protocols for ad hoc networking environments. Where possible references are provided to Mobile VCE publications to enable further reading

EAP-CRA for WiMAX, WLAN and 4G LTE Interoperability

Today we are moving into a “post-PC” world! Not many people sit in front of custom built PCs to do their businesses any more. Hand held devices such as iPod Touch, iPhone, Galaxy S3, iPad, Galaxy Tab, Airbook, Notepad etc. are bringing in a new paradigm as to how people use and communicate information. These devices can be thought as a theoretical “black-box”. They are for people who want to use it without wanting to know how they work. Such devices have third generation user interfaces – multi touch, physics and gestures (MPG). They need updates, but the user is not worried of how and where the files are stored. When a new application is installed, the user sees the icon and starts using it. The user is not interested in, what files were installed or where it was installed – there is no file management. The post-PC approach to dealing with software is that it’s discovered on an app store, downloaded with a single touch and deleted with another touch. Updates all come at once from the app store and it all happens behind the scene with minimal user involvement. All this is happening and adopted rapidly because people are able to do a number of things without being restricted to one place. They can download apps, watch movies, listen to news, browse the web etc. while on the move.Griffith Sciences, School of Information and Communication TechnologyFull Tex

Security Design for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)

Wireless networking is rising with the ever-increasing need for businesses to lower costs and support mobility of workers. Compared with wired networking, wireless capability offers more timeliness, affordability, and efficiency. When performing installations, there are many tangible cost savings with using less wire between the user's appliance and a server. However, most of the organization that decided to deploywireless network within their working environment often overlooked the security aspect of the deployed wireless LAN. Therefore, this will jeopardize the organization's safety in terms of network security and business trade secrets if their network is intruded by their rivals. This project concentrates on Wireless Local Area Network architecture and the security aspect of the designed network. Firstly, the project will emphasizes on researching about WLAN architecture. This is to ensure best practice method to be taken in designing the WLAN. It is then followed by extensive research to deploy better security to the designed network. However, the security aspect to be deployed is based on the needs and the architecture of the WLAN. The designed network is tested by conducting similar simulation at the lab which represents real - time performance and situation where the network architecture will be implemented and tested. For the time being, 802.IX / EAP ( Extensible Authentication Protocol ) is proven to be the best practice solution to secure any Wireless LAN implemented. Through the simulation, it will be proven that the proposed WLAN design is secure for implementation by any other interested parties

A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends

This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201

Secure and Privacy-Preserving Authentication Protocols for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the challenges in next-generation wireless networks such as providing flexible, adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective solutions to service providers. As WMNs become an increasingly popular replacement technology for last-mile connectivity to the home networking, community and neighborhood networking, it is imperative to design efficient and secure communication protocols for these networks. However, several vulnerabilities exist in currently existing protocols for WMNs. These security loopholes can be exploited by potential attackers to launch attack on WMNs. The absence of a central point of administration makes securing WMNs even more challenging. The broadcast nature of transmission and the dependency on the intermediate nodes for multi-hop communications lead to several security vulnerabilities in WMNs. The attacks can be external as well as internal in nature. External attacks are launched by intruders who are not authorized users of the network. For example, an intruding node may eavesdrop on the packets and replay those packets at a later point of time to gain access to the network resources. On the other hand, the internal attacks are launched by the nodes that are part of the WMN. On example of such attack is an intermediate node dropping packets which it was supposed to forward. This chapter presents a comprehensive discussion on the current authentication and privacy protection schemes for WMN. In addition, it proposes a novel security protocol for node authentication and message confidentiality and an anonymization scheme for privacy protection of users in WMNs.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures. The work is an extended version of the author's previous works submitted in CoRR: arXiv:1107.5538v1 and arXiv:1102.1226v